NATURAL SELECTION AND ENVIRONMENT 169 



than wisdom and love as these are higher than brute 

 force. You will answer, this is not only hiconceivable, 

 it is impossible. Still let us grant the possibility. 

 We notice, first of aU, that it is against the whole 

 course of evolution that these faculties should be 

 other than mental, and what we class under powers 

 pertaining to our personality. For ages past evident- 

 ly, and no less really from the very beginning, evolu- 

 tion has worked for the body only as a perfect 

 vehicle of mind, and for this as leading to will and 

 character. And human development has led, and 

 ever more tends, as Mr. Drummond has shown, to 

 the arrest, though not the degeneration, of the body. 

 It is to remain at the highest possible stage of eiB- 

 ciency as the servant of mind. These higher powers 

 will thus be mental and personal powers. And how 

 has any and every advance to higher capabilities been 

 attained in the animal kingdom? Merely by the 

 most active possible exercise of the next lower power. 

 This is proven by the sequence of physical and men- 

 tal functions. We shall attain, therefore, any higher 

 mental capacities only by the continual practice of 

 wisdom and love. That is our only path to some- 

 thing higher, if higher there shall ever be. But if we 

 find that the God of our environment is a God of 

 something higher than love and righteousness, will 

 these cease to be characteristics of his nature and es- 

 sence ? Not at all. 



I have learned, perhaps, to know my father as a 

 plain citizen. If I later find that he is a king and 

 statesman, with powers and mental capacities of which 

 I have never dreamed, do I therefore from that time 

 cease to think of him as wise and kind and good ? Not 



